A camera, like a guitar, is just a box with a hole in it. Until it is placed in the hands of a true artist, it will not make a music, only noise.
- Tim Mantoani - Source: [Foreword] „Behind photographs (Archiving photographic legends) by Tim
Mantoani, Channel Photographics, San Diego CA, 2011

Photography is not just a means of seeing the world, but a vehicle to understand ourselves. On individual and social levels, photography is a way of documenting our lives, capturing important moments, places, and experiences, and sharing those moments with others.
- Tim Mantoani - Source: „Behind photographs" (Archiving photographic legends) by Tim Mantoani, Channel
Photographics, San Diego CA, 2011, p. 40

The power of photograph, both in moving and still form, has greatly influenced the development and evolution of culture, and humans as a species.
- Tim Mantoani - Source: „Behind photographs (Archiving photographic legends) by Tim Mantoani, Channel Photographics, San Diego CA, 2011, p. 40

In the corporate world, photography is an integral component of commerce, advertising, and information transfer. Photography brings the world to us: art, architecture, fashion, nature, war, and far-off lands. Virtually every aspect of our daily lives is influenced by images and to such a degree that we rarely even think about it. Photography has become commonplace, expected.
- Tim Mantoani - Source: „Behind photographs (Archiving photographic legends) by Tim Mantoani, Channel Photographics, San Diego CA, 2011, p. 40

Who knows what a photo taken today may come to represent in ten, twenty… perhaps fifty years. Photography represents fractions of seconds, preserved and then put away for minutes, hours, days, years or decades before they are shown again to bring these moments to life.
- Tim Mantoani - Source: „Behind photographs (Archiving photographic legends) by Tim Mantoani, Channel Photographics, San Diego CA, 2011, p. 67

When granted access, photographers often have a pass into worlds that few others see in person. It can be both blessing and a curse, as photographers have seen both the best and worst of humanity. For the viewer, it is a glimpse into a locked room, forgotten culture, the end zone, the horrors of war, the mind of an artist or the chance to study every detail of a famous face...
- Tim Mantoani - Source: „Behind photographs (Archiving photographic legends) by Tim Mantoani, Channel Photographics, San Diego CA, 2011, p. 83

Photography happens in fractions of seconds. If you totaled the precise time it took to make every image in the book and combined them, it would only amount to a few seconds. In each image, in every frame, there is the moment when the photographer chose to record the image. It is not the camera that makes the picture, it is the photographer.
- Tim Mantoani - Source: „Behind photographs (Archiving photographic legends) by Tim Mantoani, Channel Photographics, San Diego CA, 2011, p. 119

..Great photographers work on impulse, on their gut. They listen to that voice in the back of their head even when it is telling them to do something that common sense tells them not to.
- Tim Mantoani - Source: „Behind photographs (Archiving photographic legends) by Tim Mantoani, Channel Photographics, San Diego CA, 2011, p. 135

Photographers are collectors, every one of them. Some collect bits and pieces of various subjects while others become obsessed with only one. We should be thankful to these compulsive individuals who CAN NOT quit. It is through their obsession that history is archived, various stories are collected and told with their single voice running through them, preserved for those that follow.
- Tim Mantoani - Source: „Behind photographs (Archiving photographic legends) by Tim Mantoani, Channel Photographics, San Diego CA, 2011, p. 155

In the natural world, there must be a balance; man, animals and mother Earth, sharing the same space. An image that can harness this balance can be extremely powerful: a perfect circle of barracuda, a bond between man and dog, an eagle hunter from an ancient world. And when the balance is disrupted, we too are drawn to see the evils with our own eyes. We can’t look, but we can’t look away.
- Tim Mantoani - Source: „Behind photographs (Archiving photographic legends) by Tim Mantoani, Channel Photographics, San Diego CA, 2011, p. 171